


Realms of Glory(ish)

by Carrieosity



Series: Sugarplum Ficlets [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Bethlehem, Biblical Reinterpretation, Castiel is a Little Shit, Christmas, Crack, First Christmas, Gabriel Being Gabriel, Gen, Inappropriate Humor, Michael Is So Done, Pre-Canon, Sassy Balthazar, Straight-up blasphemy, nativity story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 05:24:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrieosity/pseuds/Carrieosity
Summary: Somewhere down below them, there's a woman getting ready to have a baby in a barn, and big plans are in place for the birth announcement. It's going to be great, it's going to be epic, and if everybody would just stop being stupid, Michael won't have to resort to violence to make it happen.Or: How the Heavenly Hosts celebrated the first Christmas, family style.





	Realms of Glory(ish)

**Author's Note:**

> (I blame [her](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitforspring/pseuds/sharkfish) for encouraging me. If lightning strikes me, I suppose I asked for it.)

"All right, all right!" Michael ran his hands through his hair in a decidedly _human_ gesture. Angels weren't supposed to feel frustration as men did, but moments like these surely pushed him closer toward understanding the earthly emotion. Technically, both the hair and the hands were affectations as well, but if he was going to feel something, he was going to feel it right _._ He cast an eye across the firmament, currently crowded with the heavenly hosts. "Let's run through this one more time, shall we? This should _not_ be this difficult. I swear, it's like herding _putti._ "

"Speaking of them, Brother, how come they're not here, flitting around everywhere?" Raphael muttered, examining the cuffs of his robe. "Wasn't this supposed to be an 'all hands on board' event?"

"Technically, yes, but I may have neglected to involve them in the rehearsal," Michael muttered back. "It's not as though they'd get much out of it, anyway. Collective memory of a fruit fly. We can call them in when it's time to put on the show, and it'll be fine. Nobody will even care what they do, anyway. They can just flap their little wings and show their little dimples, and everybody will coo and say 'ahhhh'."

"It's your project," Raphael sighed. "I'm only saying that _putti_ are less irritating than some of the actual hosts." He sent a scathing look off to the side, pointedly glaring in the direction of the Fifth Choir. Hannah and Adina were bickering yet again, presumably over the Star. Miracles and signs were the Fifth Choir's responsibility, but in another minute, Michael was going to take the job out of their hands entirely and hand it over to the Ophanim.

"If you would just listen, you'd understand!" Adina spat. "This is supposed to be the miraculous event of the century, and it calls for something a little bigger than a simple twinkle!"

"If we make it as big as you want, it'll blind the baby! Wouldn't that be perfect? 'Unto you a child is born—so sorry about the eyes, though.'" Hannah's impressively cutting sarcasm made Adina's pale cheeks flame with indignation, and Hael gasped and put a hand over her mouth, covering her delighted grin.

"Would you two knock it off?" Michael called, staring at them coldly. Both angels folded their hands and lowered their eyes meekly. The moment he looked away, he heard whispering and scuffling, but he decided to ignore it for now. "As I was saying, we—"

 _TOOT-TOOT TOOOOOOOT!_ Everyone present startled and jumped, then started shouting angrily. Raphael strode to where Gabriel was bent double in laughter; he tried to grab for the trumpet in Gabriel's hand, but Gabriel leapt away, holding it over his head as he cackled.

"Can somebody please explain to me who thought it was a good idea to entrust him with a musical instrument?" It was impolitic to criticize an Archangel openly and within earshot, but apparently Balthazar was too tipsy to care any longer. Michael had noted the silver flask being discreetly passed around Anna's garrison of warriors, but he'd decided there were larger battles to fight than one over sobriety.

Gabriel made a rude noise at Balthazar. "Oh, like you'd be any better. If you think nobody noticed the rude lyrics you 'inspired' Solomon to scribble down in his diary, you'd better think again. 'Breasts like fawns,' you perverted—"

"That's _imagery,_ you cretin—"

"Both of you, shut up!" Michael shouted, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back on his shoulders. "And Gabriel, if you do that one more time, I'm going to give you a tambourine instead. Do you really want all the future monks in monasteries to be depicting you with a little jingly rhythm instrument? Hmmm?"  

A voice from the crowd whispered, "What is he...I don't…"

"Don't worry about it," Metatron murmured conspiratorially, a smug look in his eyes. "You'll find out _all_ about that someday, when you need to." Michael hid his grimace; it was one thing to safeguard prophecies known only among the highest echelons of authority, and he did regret slipping up like that in front of the hosts, but he really hated it when the Scribe acted like a know-it-all simply because he actually _was_ an (almost literal) Know-It-All.

"So the Star will be the main cue," Michael went on, clinging to the hope that inertia would eventually prevail. "The baby's born, he's all cleaned up, and the Star lights the sky. Then we get Gabriel blowing the horn— _not right now_ —and everybody should be already lined up and ready to go."

"And you're kicking it off with the old standard 'Fear not,'" Balthazar laughed into his flask. "You know, there's a reason we always have to say that, right? Because we keep going in all…" He waved his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers, and made a grotesque face. "Really, who can blame them for wetting themselves?"

"Momentous events call for grandeur," Zachariah roared pompously. The other Cherubim snarled, screeched, bellowed, and called out their raucous agreement, their extra faces quadrupling the volume they should rightfully have been able to generate. Virgil's eagle face snapped its beak toward Balthazar, who blew a raspberry back. Behind the group of Cherubim, the Ophanim revolved and rotated ominously, hundreds of glowing eyes blinking to convey...something. It was hard to tell. Honestly, they were a bit on the creepy side, and Michael debated establishing an "Angelic forms with visible mouths only" rule for events like this.

"You know, there's a bigger problem than the crippling terror that will no doubt send half of the men running for their lives," a voice from the Sixth Choir growled. Castiel wasn't wearing the face of a lion, of course; he merely couldn't help that he sounded like one naturally. At the moment, he was rifling through a copy of the script, his face looking as grouchy as usual. "Have you considered that the shepherds in question will be uneducated men of the countryside, not Pharisees or scholars?"

"Your point?" Michael said as patiently as he could manage, which wasn't very. Castiel, despite the perpetual scowl, always seemed to take great pleasure in nit-picking, and Michael was in no mood for his brother's pedantry at the moment.

"Then why is this proclamation written in Hebrew? These men will all speak Aramaic." Castiel tilted his head, narrowing his eyes in feigned concern and bemusement. Anna, standing beside him, grabbed the script from his hands and started poring over it quickly, while Balthazar burst into raucous laughter.

Metatron started huffing loudly. "Oh, come on! They're in the same language family! And considering that they're all going to actually perceive the hosts singing in whatever native language they speak, it wouldn't matter if I wrote it in ancient Sumerian! You're just trying to make trouble, _Ass-_ tiel."

Castiel scoffed and rolled his eyes. The angels around them were swiveling their heads back and forth in obvious entertainment over the banter. Even Raphael looked amused. Not that Raphael was a fan of Castiel on most days, but watching him turn his irritability onto Metatron was...diverting for all. Michael almost hated to cut the show short, but there wasn't time for it.

"It'll be fine for now," Michael said firmly. "We need to move on to the song. As soon as I've finished giving the shepherds their directions to the stable, you all appear behind me. Everyone knows where they're supposed to be standing? East to west, it's First, Second, Third Spheres, with the Choirs of each arranged from front to back?"

"I actually have another question, Michael," Anna cut in, raising a hand. "You're sending them straight to the stable? A bunch of strange men, showing up right after the mother gives birth? Isn't she going to be uncomfortable about that? Not to mention the germs." Hannah and Adina, in agreement for once, nodded.

"She'll be fine," Gabriel countered. "I mean, I'm the only one here who's actually met her. She's a tough cookie. I only had to 'fear not' her once. Of course, I wasn't dressed up like a National Geographic documentary, but still."

_("Can somebody please tell me what they're talking about? I'm so confused."_

_"Shhhh.")_

"Look, this whole program has already been vetted and approved by everybody who gets to have a say," Michael snapped. "More importantly, it's been approved by _me._ We're not changing things up at this point. Just trying to get through it as it stands is making me want to skip ahead a few millennia and jump-start the apocalypse. Fighting Lucifer has got to be easier." He took a deep breath, gritting his teeth, then turned on his heel and strode to his mark. "Form up Spheres and Choirs."

There was muttering and shuffling as everybody searched for their positions. Arguing erupted for a moment over whether height should be considered in the arrangement ("What's the point of having the other Choirs here if half of us are hidden behind the bloody flying wheels?"), resolved abruptly when Raphael took out his weapon and started cleaning his nails meaningfully. A discussion between a couple of angels in the lowest Choir made its way to Michael's ears. "So this is Dad’s kid being born?” one asked.

“Well, that’s what He said in the Message that went around, but then someone said Nathaniel overheard Him in the Garden telling Joshua that the baby is actually _Him_ , so now I have no idea.”

"Hmmph," the first angel said. "Good thing our part of the program is sort of vague, I guess. Yay, Baby."

On the other side of the hosts, Castiel was complaining again. "It's needlessly complicated," he groused to anyone who would listen. "Lights, music, cast of thousands...I don't understand why we had to go out of our way to shape events so that the baby would be born in the middle of nowhere, and then we put on this overwrought production to try to gather a crowd. You do realize that if we light up the sky and sing at the top of our lungs, we _will_ be seen by more than just these few shepherds, right?"

"Always with the questions, that one," Ion said under his breath, smirking at Esper. "Somebody's due for another trip to Naomi's office, hmmm?"

"What?" Castiel said.

"What?" Ion said. The two stared at each other for a moment until Michael cleared his throat, catching their attention.

"I'll give the cue. Remember, come in after 'lying in a manger.' Ready?" Gathering himself, he paused and waited for silence. The electricity seemed to swell, and Michael found himself smiling in anticipation. At the height of the tension, he opened his mouth to begin.

_TOOT TOOT-TOOT TOOOOOOOT!_

Chaos erupted. _Next time, maybe we'll just send a dove,_ Michael thought, watching Ishim's garrison tear away after Gabriel, shouting and cursing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Truth: our church has a nativity scene at the front of the sanctuary, and for years my husband and I have giggled stupidly over the disproportionately tiny angel that hung at the top of the stable, calling it "Tinker-angel." Well, I guess it broke in storage, because it's not there (and a wise man seems to have suffered debilitating injuries to his arm). I am SO TEMPTED to make an Ophanim to replace it.


End file.
